


Bound in Light - Book Two

by alephthirteen



Series: Tooth and Claw [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex Chasing Kara Around Begging her Not to Scare the Humans, BDSM, Domme Kara, Domme Lena, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Kara Being Proud of Her Heritage, Kara is soft to her girls, Krypton is Matriarchal, Kryptonian History, Kryptonian Pre-History, Secret Wives, Sub Cat, Supergirl Testifies Before Congress, Supergirl has a YouTube about Krypton, Supergirl has a paysite teaching alien sex tips, Supergirl is Besties with President Marsdin, Supergirl is a Sassy Little Shit, Susan Vasquez is the Chief Alienfucker in this Outfit, The DEO Is Not Evil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:36:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: This chapter contains some juicy bits from Book One.  They don't stand alone but this helps give you a rough idea of the flow.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Andrea Rojas, Kara Danvers/Cat Grant, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Original Character(s), Samantha "Sam" Arias/Alex Danvers
Series: Tooth and Claw [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872937
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	1. Previously on...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some juicy bits from Book One. They don't stand alone but this helps give you a rough idea of the flow.

The ship's running lights blaze through the sunless water as Kara rotates the map on the main display. 

The cockpit glass is cracking after being subjected to a bumpy FTL exit, a controlled crash, takeoff, reentry, and punching through a glacier in the span of less than twenty breaks. Kara flicks her fingers on the weapons panel and the armored shutters close over it.

"Warning. Temperature warning. Cabin environment unsafe. Eject. Eject. Eject." 

Kara finds the control for the onboard computer and mutes it. She doesn't have long. If these the locals discovered the first ship, they'll find this one too. Maybe not as quickly but the hole she just made in the tundra on that northern continent and the hole she made here will draw attention. Give them a few orbits and they will work their way down.

"Communication pulse, all frequencies. Minimum power. Content is: Engine failure. Request evacuation."

"The engines are fully functional, Kara. The only non-functional system on the ship is the nervous system of Lyta-Zod."

"Another word, ship. Another word about her and I destroy you. Send the pulse."

"Sending. Reply received."

"Where?"

The display indicates a spot at the other end of the cavern.

"Navigate to it using gaseous thrusters. Xenon gas only. Execute."

Kara unclips the pilot's straps and sets the gravity generators to null the planet's gravity. Lyta's battered body floats up into Kara's arms. Her onesuit from the guests' quarters is torn and debris has cut bloody valleys into her dark skin. Kara teases an eyelid back and uses the medical kit's light. Nothing. Kara brushes the eyelids closed and gathers her lover into her lap. How is it that Kara's broken leg healed so fast the air cracked around it from the force but she hasn't recovered? 

"Darling, you have your grandmother's eyes. If only we'd met at matching day, not in a prison."

Kara lets the tears fall. 

"How long until we are in docking range, computer?"

"Twenty marks."

If this was a math problem she could solve it. She doesn't have the inputs though. She doesn't know the variables.

"The alien?"

"Alive. Unconscious. I am detecting multiple cardiac signatures."

"Explain."

"She appears to be carrying an embryonic-stage offspring. Data is inconclusive but it has a different genital phenotype than the mother."

Kara sighs.

"Does the scout ship have a genesis chamber that is functional?"

"Yes. It has three. It appears to be a third-dynasty model."

"Viable embryo count?"

"One hundred thirty thousand one hundred and two, seed genetics sufficient for continual replenishment."

The airlock's inner door is cycling behind her. The cold will keep Jayna's remaining brain function and slow her respiration and lower the alien's metabolic rate so she can operate safely. Kara would rather rip her own heart and join her in the Light of Rao than lose the last she has. If it means saving her beloved, this alien is spare parts. 

* * *

Kara breaks the ice effortlessly. Her bare body soaks in fresh, natural sunlight and she sighs. Less intense than the ship's reactors by far but it's comforting to feel a star's breath on her face. 

A flying figure has approached her from below but kept his distance.

"Approach me I will kill you," she bellows.

The reply is in one of the flat, hollow languages of the aliens -- humans, she learned -- but when her vision pierces his suit and his skin, she sees that the bones and muscles are those of a Kryptonian.

"Do you speak my tongue?"

"Yes."

"Name yourself."

"Kal-El."

"I have an infant cousin of that name."

"If you are Kara Zor-El, I am that cousin."

"You may approach, male, and I will decide if you are kin or not."

He soars up beside her. He has her uncle's brown, messy hair and her aunt's hauntingly blue eyes. 

"Kal, indeed."

* * *

Her mom is waiting for Alex the moment she's in the door. Her long fingers are plucking idly at the napkins she set out -- the fancy ones -- for what apparently is a family dinner Alex didn't know about. She didn't do anything with her hair today, just left a long curtain of pale blonde hanging around her shoulders. She usually doesn't unless she has in-person classes. The dinner rolls on the table look like her mom sleep-baked halfway to _challah, r_ ealized it wasn't the sabbath. and then made garlic knots instead.

If Alex didn't know her mom, if she wasn't her daughter, she wouldn't be able to know when she was smiling. The smiles are small and they're slow and they look like nothing but if you know Eliza, you know exactly how powerful her happiness is. How lifesaving having Eliza as a mom is when you're fifteen and heartbroken and you don't want to stop drinking -- because that's what you do after breakups, right? -- even though you've never drunk before except at temple and this is shoplifted whisky you're probably going to die from so much. Alex is lucky, especially compared to her group partner in OChem this week. Rachel could sleep on the streets or in a shelter that would make her hate herself or she could pay for a dorm room she can't afford. Alex could choose to stay home and sleep in a familiar bed. 

"Sit, please."

"Oooookay," Alex replies, slowly sliding her backpack into the empty wicker basket by the back door. "What did I do wrong?"

Her mom's mouth slides upward, slightly, and she reaches for Alex's hands.

"Nothing, baby. You are the most amazing thing I ever did."

"So, all those people I buried out in the woods..."

"Well, I'm not mad. I am disappointed but I'm sure you had good reason," Eliza teases.

"Whatever did I do to deserve you?" 

"Be born, Ally. That's all it takes to deserve love."

Eliza sighs.

"You remember how dad and I were thinking about adopting?"

* * *

"Pop quiz, Dad. Welcome to Earth 101. Go."

"Eliza is the oldest female in the house and your mother. She will defer to Lizzie. She told you she likes painting. Animals were extinct on Krypton so we go vegan and we keep her away from roadkill. She speaks English but is not fluent. Kal has a copy of a language tutoring program. Besides that, I don't press. Eliza's opinion of me will push Kara towards or away."

"That thing nearly melted your computer," Alex teases.

"I don't think it was designed for wacky space magic," he grumbles. "Your turn. Kryptonian Women's Studies. Go."

"A sister honors her sister in five ways: she honors her safety, her wishes, her needs, her heart and her lovers. A daughter honors her mother in three ways: she takes no action to undermine her station, she honors her heart, and she takes no lover her mother does not know."

Jeremiah nods.

"What else?"

"Pfft. Let's see. My big thing is her feeling like she belongs and helping her find that Earth is more than just a place that feels like a graveyard. She was basically trained to be Uber Enrico Fermi when she left so I got her some Earth electronics to reverse engineer. I loaded a crapton of movies onto the DVR so she can ramp up. I got a punch card for basically every fryer-using restaurant in town, that spooky dude dropped off a credit card for her food."

"Sex was female-requested or female-approved so if someone gropes her in the hallway, expect to explain a shattered wrist. Make sure she doesn't know certain slurs before she has control of her powers."

"Kryptonians go through five-stage puberty give or take, over their lifespans -- _ick! --_ and she's likely between one and two but Kara's DNA means she won't get pimples here. Her hair probably can't be cut, or dyed, so I looked up styling blogs. Like, crazy splinter Mormon cult styling blogs, so I want a raise on my coffee allowance."

"I, uh, reached out to a friend who works at Star Labs about absorbent carbon-coated PLA fibers. Told it was for if I cut myself on my foot skating. First-year associate, so I'm not sure he can do jack but it might be a bulletproof tampon option."

Her dad hugs her to him and kisses her hair.

"That's six more things than was asked for. Above and beyond, sport. Above and beyond."

* * *

A figure bursts from the water and approaches, her bare toes dipping in the foam like a ballerina _en pointe._

Alex waves.

"Hi, Kara! I'm err."

That's all she manages.

Kara's hair isn't just shiny, it's reflecting or bioluminescent or something. Honey gold sheets of wet curls casting light over the water. Hair clings to her pale blue one-piece jumpsuit of _whatever that is_ and it sticks to all her curves. Unbraided and stringy from the saltwater, it reaches down to her waist and a few strands of hair are split apart over the curve of Kara's right breast. Wet hair choosing the path of least resistance by going around the fiber-clad nipple, not over. Like a river going around a stone. 

Only her neck, face, feet and hands are exposed. Nothing else. Her skin is white like an eggshell, just a ghost of pinkness to it. The pale skin and the golden hair and the eyebrows -- darker blonde, like toffee -- mean that Alex can pick out Kara's eyes farther away. Big and blue and dark, stopping short of violet. The color of the sky two hours after the sun goes down but before night truly falls.

Alex rips her eyes away and taps a message into her phone to her roommate Rachel.

"Am I a bad person, dad?" she asks without looking back towards the water.

"Not if we can kick the habit in a week," he replies, rather red-cheeked himself.

Eliza walks behind them and smacks them both on the head, twice.

When she looks back, Kara is there. She turns to Eliza, balls her fist over her chest on the left side and bows slightly. When she does, Alex can just see the top of her head. She's six years older and for every year, Kara has an inch on her.

_"I place myself in your household, Eliza out of Ruth, out of daughters countless, out of the matriarch Sarah."_

_"Welcome,"_ Eliza replies, remember to bow but not return the closed fist.

* * *

Rachel sighs.

"Good. OK. Tell me what happened."

"So you know how I've been...weird?"

"You mean how my last girl dumped me because she was about to pop off in my lap but she was fully convinced you were going to go Nightmare on Elm Street if she stayed the night?"

"Yeah," Alex replies. "That. Sorry, by the way."

"Don't be. Deliberately provoking jealousy is a common tactic to get straight girls into the pot and broken in half."

"What?"

"Spaghetti is straight until it gets hot and wet, Alex." Rachels's voice was a couple octaves lower than Alex's ears were ready for.

"Oh god, do all lesbians tell dad jokes?"

Rachel laughs.

"So what happened?"

Alex chews the inside of her cheek while she thinks. If she can pull off this lie convincingly, maybe there's a spot at the CIA.

"Kara hadn't seen the ocean up close yet. So I take her. She runs out, falls in and then comes back. Soaked."

"OK. So like a 'oh boy women's curves are neat and why didn't I wrap my legs around them before' type thought?"

Alex sighs.

"Again, kinda but not quite. See, she sprinted past me right when she got here and then ran into the water. The first time I get a good look at her, she's floating on the water and then she's coming towards me. At that point, it's just a body, y'know? Too far away to see a face. Then I see a face and she smiles and I forgot how to say my own name. She said she wanted to learn how to be my family and we hugged and then something sort of turned off and I was holding my sister, not a pretty woman."

"Do you have a picture of you two?"

Alex flips through her phone's gallery.

"No, no, no. These are crap. Hang on."

She turns the phone to Kara, who has her fork way over her head and is staring at a strand of spaghetti like an oceanologist staring at an unknown type of fish. She changed into a beat-up gray t-shirt to help Jeremiah with the Pontiac he's restoring. Namely, to get around the fact they don't have a shop jack by just hoisting it up long enough for him to remove something. Kara tore off the grease-stained sleeves of the shirt after -- she assumed it was recyclable, like her clothes -- and left her hair in the fat, five-weave braid it was in when she was in the garage.

Alex puts it on burst mode and holds the button down. Kara turns her head because apparently, she can hear the electronic shutter's circuitry firing.

"Check your email."

"Get out!" Rachel hollers, making Alex hold her phone further away. "Wow. The neck, the biceps, _fuck, her eyes_ and her ears and _sweet lesbian jesus,_ those lips. Is she not even...no way? No lip gloss?"

"She hasn't figured out how to use a detachable showerhead, Rach. I had to show her which...I thought the beach was bad. Good thing she didn't know clothes come off before showering. I'd be dead of embarrassment. Makeup is a next week problem."

"I want one."

"She's fourteen. No."

You just be panicky for a minute, I'm going to put a note in my calendar for five years from now when she's not jailbait."

"I hate you, Rachel."

"Honestly? Understandable. I have been sort of flouncing it once I saw you blushing. Look. Alex...every symptom you described? Sudden sort of 'pop' and then it's like the Wizard of Oz? Everything's got colors now and you see things differently?"

"Exactly! Right! Yeah?"

"Combine that with brain mush and it's gay panic. I had that in eight grade when Sammy Olivier handed me a valentine because Joey didn't. I'll remember the scrunched-up look on her face till the day I die. So yeah, bare minimum, you experience same-sex attraction. Fit girls in casual clothes are practically softcore porn, at least for me, so it's not like a perverted type...unless it's your sister."

"Fuck you."

"No. Come fuck me yourself, coward."

* * *

"Hi"

Caitlin jumps up so fast she sprains her ankle. It's still dark out.

_Five forty. I'm not going to get back. Just a weird little dream._

"Please let me in."

Turning her head towards the sound, Caitlin realizes there's an adorable blond kid outside the window. The ninth-floor window. The window of a ten-story building which was designed not to have any eaves, overhangs or balconies for security reasons. She's waving and her smile is far too bright for Caitlin's eyes right now and she has a coffee in each hand. She's waving as eagerly as she can without spilling. One of the cups has 'Caitlin' on it. Bare minimum, she needs to figure out how Sunshine McPerkytitties out there knows her name. She turns the crank to open the window and the blonde just sort of oozes in, like a cat squeezing into a box.

The smell hits her immediately and her stomach growls.

"Pumpkin spice? Gimme!"

Caitlin snatches it and sips.

"Oh god. Marry me," she groans.

"I mean, if you want," the blonde replies. "But I think we should get to know each other first."

The more nutmeg and sugar she gets into her, the more her faculties return.

"How old are you, kid?"

"Fourteen."

Caitlin sprays a mouthful of precious, life-giving coffee on the kid.

"So, just to be clear, I was joking just now."

"Yeah. I know. I'm here because I could use some help. Alex said you can help me?"

"I'm listening."

"I need a haircut and I need to knit something."

"And you're here at Star Labs. Calling in a favor."

"Yup. I'm Kara, by the way."

"Caitlin Snow, as you apparently know."

"Why did you come to a high-energy physicist in a DOD-funded lab for a haircut?"

Her weird new friend floats off the floor and...so...does...her hair. Caitlin sighs and throws her now-empty cup aside.

"Fine. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing I do with work today. What do you need?"

"Your hydrogen compression engine has like, a maintenance hatch, right? Ours were usually single-cast shells."

"Our what?"

She spins one hand around the other then throws her hands apart and mimics an explosion.

"Fusion reactor downstairs? I suppose it must."

"Great. And no one's going to interrupt us in the laser array until lunch, right?"

Caitlin bonks her head on the wall.

"The alien. From Gotham. The one who moved like Superman. Who saved Superman from launching himself dickfirst into the mutant turtle of murder. Probably saved his life. That was you?"

* * *

Light filters into the cave gradually, entering at a low angle. Hermit crabs skitter around, finding new places to hide. A sea lion hops to the entrance, looks inside, barks, and proceeds along.

As the light reaches the campsite, Kara's cells catch fire, one at time, and she yawns.

"Ah missed you," Stacy drawls.

"When I was sleeping?" Kara asks.

"Mmm. Yeah. No one ever treated me like I wasn't broken until you."

She shudders and curls her freckled body tighter around Kara.

"How long until I've had enough of your blood?" Stacy wonders, trailing her finger around Kara's navel. 

She's staring at the transfusion kit in the corner next to the crate of cookies Kara used to replenish herself.

Kara squeezes the springy flesh around Stacy's hips. Firmer than last night but that might be temperature, not metamorphosis.

"No clue. I'll keep you safe until then though."

"Ah know you will. Just...flying sounds like fun, s'all. Can we lie here a while? I'll want some but we've got time. Kinda squeezed out down there."

* * *

Clark steps in front of Diana as the reporters keep shouting.

"As Miss Prince's publicist, I will be handling all other questions. She has a contract for the Louvre that she must complete. You, for Ms. Magazine."

Diana slides into the limo. Barbara Ann nods at her, closing the ancient Phoenician tome on her lap.

"Home?"

"Home, kitten. I must work on a bust of Hermes, repaint it after those stupid twats at the British Museum scraped it off in vanity. I'll be home to cook dinner and then we can let our hair down. Driver, Metropolis Airport please."

* * *

"Where's my 10:15?" Cat bellows.

A plainly-dressed blonde sprints into sight. She's tall but gives off absolutely no vibe of anything else. Like she was a black hole, a gap in both style and personality. She holds out her hand.

"Kara Danvers, ma'am."

"I see your hand. Sit. Who are you and why should I care?"

"I'm the best thing that ever happened to you. Three days, I'll prove it."

"Why on Earth should I do that?"

"Because I was top of my class, sorority president and three-time award-winning student journalist and more importantly, I've spent the last month scouring the public record to see what extra value I can offer you. You don't like me, fire me. Three days of pay is what, $350 at California minimum? Small bet for a woman such as yourself. Here, I compiled a file for you."

She hands it over.

"Disturbing that you found this," Cat grumbles.

She fips a page.

"Hmm. This is something to keep an eye on but I knew that already."

She flips again.

"No, whatever that its, no. The idea, yes. On the basis of your shirt alone, no."

Kara offers her hand.

"Challenge accepted?"

Cat shakes it.

* * *

Cat has a problem. Her ex-husbands have been emotionally abusive, uncaring, and distant and she doesn't have a home life beyond cooking for Carter once a week. She's alone, he misses human contact besides his hand-picked nannies and his handpicked teachers. Her 29th birthday party wasn't any easier than all the previous 29's.-

Escorts were the most logical choice but that involves leaving the office which she doesn't have time for and could bring criminal charges. Unacceptable.

Logically, an office tryst provides the fewest logistic and lifestyle barriers.

It's breach of contract. 

It can (will, probably) cost her her job. She can't deny the way the brunette in the photo is nailed on the spot, body tilted away, nervous and head titled in, curious. She wants to be the brunette and wonder what the alpha bitch will do when she rolls over and she wants to be the subject of Kara's semi-worshipful gaze when she held out her hand. 

She's Cat fucking Grant. She contains multitudes. She can be this girls' whore and this girl can treat her like a goddess for the honor of her presence. She's the Queen of All Media, she can do both.

This has to be from the start, so no one is shocked and so that it's never why Kara was promoted or why she stays late or eats lunch with Cat. Her normal day-to-day has to plausibly resemble being Cat's on-demand fuck. Cat flips through the folder for Kara's email and shoots an appointment off, lying her ass off about the office dress code.

If her fist-first approach to being interviewed for an entry-level job is any indicator, the girl might want to lead and that's one thing off Cat's plate. One less decision.

* * *

Cat's first day of Operation Get Some is hell. 

First off, Kara walks in like she owns the place in a top and skirt that leaves her arms and her shoulders bare.

Cat tries, she _tries_ to snap and belittle and bring Kara to heel but when she cuts too deep, those arms folded across Kara's chest look like artfully carved granite and Cat remembers being 20 but she's positive her breasts didn't go that high no matter what and Kara's neck is making Cat think vampire-type things and when Cat finally yells for Kara, her trademark move?

Nothing. Kara pauses and turns her head to face the fucking copywriter she was talking to, hand on her hip and says something and the poor thing giggles. 

She stills, so she can hear Cat but she doesn't acknowledge. She doesn't bother to turn all the way to face Cat. 

Kara yawns at lunch, long and feline, complete with open mouth and bared, perfect teeth and a blink-and-you miss it flicker of curled tongue. Her top and skirt pull apart and _sweet god, a glimpse of those abs!_ and Kara wiggles her fingers cutely once she's fully extended. Then she tugs her dress back and straightens out and acts like she wasn't chasing a ball of yarn ten seconds before.

Katie from Art manages to delete the cover she was working on and only the fact that Cat had it pulled up in her Dropbox saves the next issue from gay panic. 

Kara sighs and smiles and gives her IT guy desk neighbor, Winn, her lunch order as if of course that's his job and he acts like it's his _religion._ Kara eats a terrifying amount of Chinese food while everything with ovaries in the office stares at her murderously, pecks Winn on the cheek and he grins dopily and she heads into Cat's office for her 12:30 orientation.

"You may have lunch now, Miss Grant."

She plunks the greasy, crunchy mess down and Cat sees the rose pink lip gloss on the chopsticks. Kara knows. She knows Cat will eat that.

"Oh, may I?" Cat sneers.

"Yes," Kara sighs. "I want you to keep your strength up, dear."

The position is harsh but the dear seems real and her blue eyes lost their razors edge the had when she was being yelled at.

"You must be intriguing to me, dear even. Because I have your offer, in writing and I haven't told anybody. Probably, nine million, ballpark, lawsuit wise? I am in control right now."

Kara hovers, close.

"Start reading my orientation packet."

She shuffles around so it looks like Cat's just sharing confidential information.

"Look at where my leg is."

Cat gulps. Kara's wound her shin in between Cat's legs and it's there and she has it tensed up and if Cat just lifts her skirt, she can grind.

"I accept your offer, Cat. Eagerly. Now, you're a smart woman, you know what to do. Rub."

Cat does.

"Good," Kara says, crisply, and between the friction and the steel in the tone Cat fucking _hiccups_ for some stupid reason. 

"Eat your lunch, Miss Grant. I'll read these to myself."

So Cat finds herself trying to rub off on Kara's bare, sinewy, masterfully shaven leg and cocoa butter fills her lungs and she can _not_ drop greasy sauced chicken nuggets on herself. It's humiliating and she's doing all the work but she's getting off and she _is_ hungry.

'Stop," Kara commands when the roll of Cat's hips speeds up.

"You've had enough."

Kara pulls her leg back.

"You're...hired," Cat grits out. " _Please_."

"I know, but you don't have the whole arrangement yet. Tomorrow. I promise. Tomorrow's Friday and I have some ideas and we can just spend the weekend here."

"Fuck you."

"You just tried to," Kara says with a grin.

"Cat, I take care of my pets. Always. I tend to be a sort of U-Haul dominatrix, I suppose. Feelings come quickly to me. I'll be good to you. If this isn't the game you want, tell me. We'll do something else."

Cat smiles and nods and Kara grins like a firework show and Lois Lane deserves four more Pulitzers for finding this girl.

Cat hears crinkling. The actual contract part of Cat's offer was apparently signed, in red sharpie, using her collarbone as a clipboard and shenever noticed. In her mirror, the red ink reading 'Kara Z.E. Danvers' is normally oriented and Cat's been stamped now and she just shrugs and tightens her jacket over the mark.

Kara sways away and her hair swishes, unleashed upon the human race.

Cat opens her email. Lane found the other girl. Siobahn Smythe, Irish-American, Cornell, vocal music minor, the type of grades you can't get by fucking professors but you can do better than if you actually apply yourself. Working at a tiny radio station in Fresno that CatCo is about to buy and close. Hosting bluegrass music on some no-doubt hideous show called Morning Banshees. She needs backup. She needs another woman for Kara to tower over. If this goes on, one assistant, however superhuman, isn't going to be able to pick up all the threads Cat drops.

She writes up an offer, two-year contract, sneaky NDA clause and a payout in case Siobhan doesn't bite with Kara. Seventy-five percent of Kara's now obscene salary and Cat gives her important, but _less_ important duties -- always stack the deck, never play fair -- puts some blather about looking forward to it. 

Cat's lioness treated her so well and more than deserves a chew-toy.

* * *

Alex shows up at their door, motorcycle jacket that's lived in like it's her skin and rocking a haircut that basically removes the need for anyone around her to have gaydar.

"Hi, Harry!"

"Afternoon, Alex, thanks for helping."

"Hi, Alex!" Stacy calls from around the corner.

She comes around.

"Sorry to have to ask this."

"Oh, good, it's wearing pants," Alex exhales. "Give it a biscuit, please."

Stacey pouts. Alex shrugs. Then they both laugh. Alex hugs her.

"All right. So what was this again?"

Stacy and Harry look at each other.

"Ejaculation related concussion."

"With the UPS girl."

Stacy nods.

"Because your usual UPS guy is on honeymoon or something."

"Kinda."

"So of course you banged the new one. To the point where she changed her driving route for you."

"Ah mean, she wanted to," Stacy shrugs. "and ah think she'd like to make it a thing, y'know? Maybe even do non-sex stuff. Seemed lonely."

Alex lifts her head out of her hands.

"Get a whiskey, neat. No, screw that. Three. I can't practice drunk but I am not _thinking about this_ sober."

"On it," Stacy replies.

Alex looks up at Harry.

"Harry. Did this happen how I _think_ it happened? Are those needles and tubes my sister has what I think they are?"

"Yes, transfusions."

"So Kara is..."

"Turning us Kryptonian. Apparently, we hit some point and the process accelerated exponentially."

* * *

Donna is sitting at the kitchen table, Stacy's plush body squeezed against her.

She lifts the icepack off the bruise.

"God," Donna says, leaning back. "The only bad part of this story is I can't tell it to anyone. I know the secret now, though, right? I'm like, stuck?"

Alex shakes her head.

"The government tracks how many people know but unless you do something that endangers people, no. Free to do whatever."

Donna worries her lip with her teeth.

"What's the prognosis doc?"

"Don't seem to be any damage. Sleep here tonight so they can observe you. LET HER FUCKING SLEEP, STACY. Two orgasms, self-administered, and three aspirin before bed, avoid operating heavy machinery and penises, reclining cunnilingus only until your next check-up with me."

All three of them gawk at her.

"What? Gay sister can't tease you? That's actually good advice, you heathens."

Alex looks at her watch.

"Fuck. I can't make the Delta 118 now. Looks like..."

She fiddles with her phone.

"Flight 237 has a seat. Ooh, window seat even. I gotta go."

Alex gets back into her jacket.

"Fly safe!" Stacy calls out.

"Don't fuck yourself bloody!" she calls back.

* * *

Kara's curled up tight on her lap, nuzzling her cheek against Stacy's belly. Her messy, shampoo-smelling hair was laid up across Stacy's torso and over the back of the couch. It's been all over TV all night. It's looped five times on CatCo so far.

 _Hope and Help - The Flight 237 Miracle,_ the chyron reads. Rosie Williamson, CatCo's lead, was shaken out of bed and marched into the studio and she looks the part. She soldiers on. She talks about the mind-boggling challenge of it, how the plane had to tip just so to miss the minivan on the bridge. How grabbing the fuselage in the wrong place would've torn it in half. 

How the aliens who tried to interfere were pushed back. How the Air Force came in and distracted them so Kara could work and got their assess handed to them for daring to interfere. How Kara had to stop helping the plane to save an ejected pilot then hurry back and grab it.

Except nobody knows shit about what really happened and it breaks Stacy's heart.

The most powerful, most loving woman in the world is here in her lap, sniffling because her sister didn't return a voicemail and the TV people can't even focus on what she's like in real life, only on how she dodged heat vision and thrown girders. What's she like? Where's she work? Favorite song? Favorite ice cream? Weirdest period craving? 

"Who!" Stacy hisses at the muted TV, "Not _how_ , _who_!"

* * *

James Olsen crouches down. Cat, genuinely intrigued, watches him close.

"Give or take, LordTech tower is 230 feet away. That plants a few inches shorter than the wingtip. Now, I'm sitting. iPhone has a 2x, maybe 4x zoom but it's crap and that's a halfway decent shot. So it's not zoomed. 1:1. If she's say, twelve feet back from the window..." 

He steps back four big steps.

"Jenny, move that potted plant a bit, please."

"Excuse me," Cat snaps, "Rearrange my office, and you die."

James holds up his Nikon and stares into it for a minute.

"She's six-two, at least. Probably more."

Kara makes a 'hmph' sound behind Cat.

_Curiouser and curiouser..._

"Oh," Kara butts in. "She's a natural blond, obviously."

A newsroom of old men and sharklike women and senior journalists that costs 17 million in salary a year just gawks at Cat's assistant on her second day.

"What?" she snaps. She points at the lowest screen. "Eyebrows! Practically impossible to dye, and there are streaks of yellow in her hair, pretty random. Doesn't look like highlights. And she did just fly through four explosions, a missile, and get tackled into a coal barge a lunatic Superman wannabe. Girl's blonde. Just really needs a shower."

Snapper Carr, of all people, starts clapping.

"You got guts, Ponytail. Shit for sources but you've got instinct and guts. Sources, you can always find before the deadline."

Cat finds herself stepping between Snapper and Kara.

"Mine."

* * *

Alex has had bad mornings. Hungover mornings. As those go, today is a five out of ten.

One night stands? Whoever she was, fifteen of ten.

She deserved a drink. She nearly died, she had to lie on a polygraph about not knowing Kara, and then try and find a hotel room in a city of three million losing its collective shit over a terrorist attack.

A leggy, long-fingered brunette in an otherwise remarkable dive bar, wearing clothes Alex only reads about in magazines and clacking a dollar store, mass-produced sucker against her teeth. Thoughtfully, almost. Alex shouldn't have really been surprised she tasted like candy, or that she used every _inch_ of height to maneuver Alex against the alley wall.

She lifts the blankets and tries to reconstruct. Dark purple marks up one side of her ribs and down the other. That was when she landed on the bed, was flipped over, and taken apart with teeth and suction and so-sweet bruises she's going to get piles of crap for in sparring. Catspaw trail of lipstick and hickeys from neck to thigh...that's where the night gets fuzzy. There was something with a tongue as powerful, long and quick as her playmate and a growl carried from teeth to lips to clit and that's when whisky got the better of Alex. Again.

It's daytime but the curtains are drawn and Alex can easily shimmy away into the shadow.

The sounds of little boys playing make-believe outside startle Alex. Is this someone's _home_? Did the bring her home where their _kids are_? _Fuck_. Alex reaches up and tries to rub her sour-tasting mouth and comes away with a hand almost red with lipstick. 

Right. Kissing. Kissing like she was the cavewoman to discover it and breathing and licking and pulling on Alex's lips with her teeth.

Makeout. Up in the air if that's a one night stand thing.

Something hits her around the midsection.

"Hi!"

Alex clamps the sheets down around her with all her might and peeks down

It's a little girl, maybe eight.

"Hi."

"Mom's making pancakes, c'mon!"

"Ruby!" the brunette calls out. "Breakfast!"

Alex has problems and they're a stubborn, surprisingly powerful little girl trying to tug her naked, sorry ass out of bed because _they're really good and have bananas_ and finally, Momma bear rescues Alex.

* * *

Mother launches onto Alex just as daughter had, though with very different intentions.

"There's a dozen pancakes and four syrups and no supervision. We won't see her before lunch."

She takes a tennis racket the kid had abandoned in here, wings it at the door hard enough to close it with a click.

"We're doing this again?" Alex asks.

A T-Shirt flies off to somewhere past heaven and Alex's hands are placed on tawny, lean hips. The brunette surges forward, driving Alex up against the headboard and creating a white-hot pinprick of contact between her thighs and Alex's mound and Alex's breath sticks deep in her lungs.

"We're doing this again."

"Alex."

"You don't remember?" the brunette chortles.

"Get out! You knew it last night, that's for sure. Fuck, you're adorable. Soon as you tell my kid a dad joke that makes us both laugh, you get my name. Until then..."

Alex is flipped again and a new trail of hickies starts at the base of her skull.

* * *

"They..." Kara sighs. "What I said is part of it. We are high school sweethearts but they were kidnapping victims. I bumped into them doing vigilante stuff and we hit it off. Orphaned by their takers. Orphans _get_ orphans, you know? So I made up a little secret cabin and we grew up together and grew into each other, sexually, emotionally, spiritually."

"That's thing one. Hard to turn down her eyes, Kara. Dirty trick. What's thing two?"

Kara's grin is wider and the canine teeth seem to _glint_ right now.

"Brainwashing your enemies."

Cat's eyebrow arches.

"Stacy?" Kara calls out. "She can explain better."

Stacy's gait is that of a stripper on stage. She gathers up her fiery locks and holds them over her head as she fiddles with a scrunchy. Swing, swing, swing, of the hips and clack, clack, clack of her wedge heels. Like an hourglass made of ivory swishing back and forth on a chain of rubies.

"You know that game in elementary school where the kid takes your hat and says 'no ah didn't' and just denies it? His friends do too? You know it happened but no one else admits it? Start to get a little batty?"

"I'm familiar with it yes."

"The sex version thereof. A lot of your corporate enemies are not exactly believable in the public eye. So, imagine, if someone with low street cred like Morgan edge comes in here. Siobhan's got Kara's thighs around her neck, Harry's got me over the couch, one of our selected 'allies' for this prank is in here. We've hunted them down in every apartment, the likely ones. He looks around and thinks he's got you and he launches into some tirade. Jenny from sports looks at him all confused. Asks what he means, Kara's just sitting there taking notes and she doesn't see these naked gingers he's blathering on about. There's a field that will detect any electronics and we'll confiscate those."

"He goes to the media with this wild tale of the world's most famous feminist CEO having a crazy sex party in her office and during a meeting no less!"

"And you just don't reply. You don't deny it, you just never schedule another in person with him. He won't let it go and he'll finally just sound like a raving loon in a shitty suit."

* * *

Alex revs the Ducati as she takes the curve of the earth-covered reservoir fast, bends into the lot and parks her bike outside the Water Department's pump building. She swipes her badge.

"Morning, Joe."

"Morning," the big agent grunts. "What you doing here?"

"Trouble at pump..."

Joe tenses, the hand she can't see going to his weapon.

"Fourteen. Compressor, they said."

Joe laughs and pushes the button.

"You gotta drink less or sleep more, kid."

"Usually the latter," Alex sighs.

She really has cut back, thank goodness. The episodes are worrisome, but the possibility of a spiral is what terrifies her.

She steps into the elevator. The computer fires up and the thing starts dropping.

"State name, assignments, and, for security purposes, informal callsign."

"Danvers, Alex. Director of Operations, STARWIND and Field Commander of Tactical Units, Covert Division lead. Clamjam."

_Going to kill Vasquez one day for pinning me with that._

"Granted. Welcome back to ARGUS-STARWIND Installation 002, Director. State destination."

"Command, please."

The elevator pauses and Vasquez steps in, rubbing her shoulder. 

"How you been, Alex? I can ask that as a friend because I'm off duty now."

She doesn't really have an off duty-look, just an old bomber jacket, mussing her hair up with gel, and unzipping her jumpsuit halfway.

"Hard to tell, sometimes. Then why are you riding down?" Alex teases.

"I'm not riding down. I'm _going down_ but she bunks on Level 18 so..."

Alex snorts.

"You're impossible, marine."

_"Semper Fricatrice."_

"That's terrible. You're disgusting, you know that?"

"Not what Doctor Hamilton was saying last night," Vasquez shoots back.

"She was on duty!" Alex complains. "What if there had been a trauma flight coming in from the Brazil job?"

"Well, I'd put her pants back on, obviously. She would've been all loose and relaxed. Zen."

"How do I run this place? With you fucking anything with flaps, slits or anything remotely vaginal looking? Where in your briefing packet did it say, gunnery chief, Assault Division lead, and _alienfucker_?"

"Lois Lane wrote me a hall pass. I mean, if TMZ is to be believed, she's the Amelia Earhart of this brave new breed of Earth girls."

* * *

The door behind them opens.

"Hi, I'm Kara. Nice to meet you."

"Vasquez. I work with Alex. Cuuuuute miniskirt, girl."

Alex has to turn and look to make it real. To make this nightmare real. It's Vasquez, back on duty because of the kerfuffle and kitted out, her hair slicked back down and her earpiece in.

"For fucks sake!" Alex shrieks. "Vasq! No. Down, shoo! Go away! Bad dykey! No biscuit!"

Kara gawks at the vitriol. Vasquez snickers. Alex shudders.

"Vasquez, Kara. Kara, meet our resident alienfucker and heartbreaker, and pain in my ass too useful to do more than tease about it. I have decided I am going to go scream at my office wall for a while. Noonan's, Kar?"

"Sure. One o'clock. Got something to do first."

"So. Alien, huh?" Vasquez says, sidling close. "You do go all the way up, don't you? I could do things to these arms. Mmm. Are you flexing or just that hard?"

"If that's Sagittarian triplet I smell on you, you'd find me _pretty boring._ Fully analogous to humans. Better tits, but that's only subjective, except by default human male tastes. Eh, quite a number of females I've met as well. No neuroreflective fronds, definitely no detachable symbiotic neuroreflective fronds. Non-reversible, non-internally mobile vagina, the usual. Just the one clitoris, non-prehensile."

"Whoa-whoa-whoa!" Vasquez hollers. 

"Time out. Prehensile was a bit weird. We had a laugh. Need to know about this reversible business? Mobile? Sounds promising. What are fronds and how do they detach and where and how soon can I get them burrowed into my body? First things first. How _many_ did they not tell me how to find?"

Kara holds up four fingers.

"Oh, my god. I've failed. I'm vanilla. I became that which I hate: a floundering pillow princess."

"I know," Kara replies, smiling and patting Vasquez's back. "There, there."

Alex is really, really white in the face now and Vasquez is lit up like Times Square and Kara needs some revenge so it's perfect.

"Weren't you thirteen when you came here?" Vasquez sputters.

'Weren't you a problem child at thirteen, Vasquez, or is that recent?"

"I was a thirteen-year-old girl with the sort of inherited money that really defeated the point of having a money-based economy. My school was more than half subliminal downloads when I slept, visitors in and out of the house all the time of lots of species. Long-term guests of house from all kinds of planets, staying for way longer than a stupid teenage relationship takes. Some of them wanted to bag a High House bride. Time, interest, options, at least some charm, I like to think. Home so cavernous and big that privacy was pretty much a guarantee. Always a soft place to sleep."

"Oh. Oh!" Vasquez chirps. 

"Ohh," she purrs. "I'm going to _like_ you. Friends?"

"Friends," Kara agrees. "Actually, I'm adopting. You're a Danvers sister now. We have shirts and stuff."

"When is the next fucking floor?" Alex groans.

* * *

Kara and Lois get on, Cat learns. Better than Lois and Cat herself do, even. 

They get on like two hydrogen atoms, crashing and hugging and messy and energetic and city-destroying and powerful. Because soon they're on the roof, Lois has slipped alien-grade Everclear into Kara's hard lemonade and she's scaring the shit out of littering businessmen in Tokyo using heat vision. She aims using a reflection she can somehow detect on the fucking moon even drunk off her ass. She uses a mirrored panel on a derelict spy satellite Russia powered down in the seventies for the bank shots.

Kara sort of melts onto Cat.

"I shot all ten wrappers. In Tohk-mmm-Took-you're soft-Thy- _Tokyo_."

"I"m very impressed."

"She's pretty," Kara mumbles, tapping Cat's nose. "Gor," she stumbles. "Rhadi," she hiccups. "Resph. Shexy. Want one."

Cat leans in to Lois.

"Two bottles. This week. A case, ASAP."

"Aww, you like?"

"Drunk, cuddly, stupid, needy Kara? Yes, you idiot, I like."

Kara pauses, big-eyed and wobbly and there's something messy and just morally _wrong_ she wants to do to Cat and she's worrying her lemonade-moistened lip with her teeth and Cat decides she can go a few weeks in a wheelchair while her pelvis knits, the building is fully accessible.

* * *

Transmat on Earth gives her a splitting headache. Transmat over interstellar distances leaves her quite refreshed.

_Something to noodle on._

The Helgrammite's mandibles shiver.

"Luthor-Madam-Younger! We expected you not for two days more time!"

"Good pronunciation," Lena jokes. "Right words. Wrong grammar. Our words, your order."

She snaps her fingers. Otis drags the trunk of solar crowns behind him, watched by Jess like an eagle watches a mouse. They let him think human males needed space suits here, but human females didn't due to the presence of the hormone ovariagynrestrogen and it's all Jess can do to keep her composure.

"Show me the pens, Halshak. I wish to leave by the second sunset."

"Once-at, Luthor-Madam-Younger!"

The pens are as always, heartwrenching. A pretty Starhavenite with mocha skin and wings of pale flame holds Infernain children to her, holding them to her feathers so they don't freeze. The headdress she wears is Chippewa, Lena recognizes. Not purely the earth version, but recognizably that of a chieftain's daughter. The Preservers took her from that tribe when their probes detected Colombus' ripple effect. Settlements were made and intermarriage happened, as it will.

"Her."

"Forty thousand," Halshak's owner tells her. 

"The children too."

"Ah, yes, good, fertile, pretty. Nine thousand each."

"Don't tell me _price_. I have your price," she hisses. "Tell me if they have any sickness, or dietary needs, and that _only_. I will leave with your records of their former trades, their places of capture. Everything. I want Halshak to collect it for me."

Lena hopes winking carried across the stars with the bewildered tribesmen. A tilt of the head suggests it did.

* * *

"Bring the human to me, unmarked and unbeaten, now. I'll take the middle decks, everyone."

"Your palace must be grand, Luthor-Madam-Younger!"

A dirty, tattooed human woman is tossed at her feet. Lena crouches down and sighs.

"Ronnie, why do I keep finding you in these places?"

Veronica laughs, weakly. 

"Poor choice in henchman on my part."

"Water," Lena demands, snapping her fingers. "Now."

She helps Veronica drink it.

"There. Better?"

"Yeah, thanks. Guess you were right about the Singapore triad."

"I am right rather often, Roulette. Don't worry, I'm already having them killed on general principle."

"Yeah, well, forgive me for not thinking straight with a full view of Lena Luthor's tits," Ronnie groans, holding the water casks' cool metal to her head. "I don't think I recovered from when we were thirteen and you let me touch them, not fully."

"Poor baby," Lena jokes.

"Otis, get her to the gate, then the relay to my office. Jess...make sure he doesn't fall into quicksand or get his dick stuck in a hole in a fence or something."

"You and I," Lena hisses. "Will be having a _talk_ about this."

"Figured," Ronnie asks. "How long until I can wear clothes again, Mistress?"

"Haven't decided," Lena says airily, looking around the filthy, wicked place.

"Worth it..." Veronica jokes, holding her bruised thumb up as Otis carries her like a sack of stupid, sexy, reckless potatoes.

"Jess?"

"Yeah, boss?"

"Book of Exodus."

Jess gun arm goes up like a sword slicing through the air and she drops two guards before the third rounds the corner. Lena pulls her Beretta from her purse--just for style points--and empties it into Bavak's confused skull.

She reaches into her blazer and clicks on her repeller circuitry. Jess had already. The next six guards find their plasma bolts going every which way except into Jess and Lena's bodies they try a missile only to have it detonate, stuck at the halfway point.

_Lex isn't the only one with tech only he can make._

"My turn," Jess snarls. Pulling out a fusion-torch blade the length of a longsword, she lunges. With it in in one hand and the lancer in the other, she ducks between, around, and often through the guards as her blade cuts them in two and in one artful use, cuts them in three.

 _Jess Huang. Chinese name. Not the greatest cover, unless you're a racist or a rube. I wonder if the other Yamashiro sisters have any skill with light filing?_ ****

"Hellspore?" Lena asks into her phone as she pulls up the facility map.

There's benefits to being a repeat customer who demands full tours.

"Two hours till the drip hits it. Seventy percent out the door, screener module on the transmat portal's control module. Good guys, home. Bad guys, nine or ten trillion different endpoints. "

* * *

Lena knows how to deal with blowhards. Usually. Clark Kent is a special case. He doesn't approach or intrude or intimidate. He just sticks, like some stump in the field, and doesn't let her push him back. They trade their barbs, a Super and a Luthor and he fully unsubtly scans her office with his vision.

"Do you play chess, Mister Kent?"

"Twice, I think," he smiles. "I didn't understand why it was so much _meaner_ than dodgeball."

All charm, all the time. Always genuine because his _human identity_ has five left feet and what amounts to negative fashion sense. Straight women in big cities are torn between wanting to ride him and wanting to protect this little deer in the deep dark woods until his antlers grow in. She supposes. 

Straight women. Not her circus, not her monkeys.

* * *

"So, so sorry! I forgot to plug the me-"

Lena turns.

_Well now._

She's speechless in Lena's presence, always a good start.

She's blonde.

She's tall.

She's muscular.

She's almost certainly Kryptonian, given her timing, the company she keeps, that sugar-white skin that hasn't burned in Metropolis in July and mostly and those ludicrous glasses.

She's everything _._

Best of all, she looks right about ready to throw Clark out the window for some alone time.

"Who are you, exactly?"

* * *

Kara gulps. Lena Luthor is leaning on her desk, red lips upcurled in a smirk, green eyes burrowing into Kara's soul and her long, pink, pretty hands spread wide. Leaning back on her desk in a way that's pornographic or regal depending on the next twitch she makes.

"Who are you, _exactly_?"

* * *

Kara's eyes wobble open. Lena is haloed by brightening stars and city lights flickering on to replace the sun and she should never be less than kissed by the greatest and brightest things humans can make. They should be honored to be the background outlining her.

"Yes, thank you, Doctor Danvers. Of course, you can count on my full discretion. Good night."

Kara's on Lena's couch and there's a fucking pulse oximeter on her finger and an AED machine has been spread out in panic across the floor and the ruined, melted paddles are melted to her shirt because of the suit below. In what might be the most Luthor move in human history, a black market betahedron has been uncased and wired into the AED using a hodgepodge of Coluan scrap parts to up the voltage penetration in case that might help. _  
_

Lena comes back over.

"The bad news, you can have heart attacks. The good news is that they're neurological tics, not damage or blockage and that your brain cells don't actually die when temporarily deprived. You scared me. Drink."

"Yeah," Kara gulps, letting her chin be lifted to the glass of water. "I'm classy like that."

Her laugh low and real and throaty. It is drums and primal dance and tribal songs and Kara is going to make her laugh so she have _all this woman's babies_ as soon as she possibly can.

* * *

Alarms sound all around him. Men and women drop behind concrete barricades staggered in the hallway. The doors to the elevator open with a thump. Supergirl walks out, the Red Tornado drone's top half thrown over her shoulder, carrying it like a backpack by its wrecked arms.

"Fourth anti-Kryptonian weapons test this week! A girl could start to take this personal, Sam!" Supergirl calls out. "Your daughters will be _ashamed_ of you!"

This cheerleader doesn't scare him. Nothing was ever hard for her, so she's cocky. It'll get her killed, soon as he can figure out what the magic bullet is.

He strolls back to his office and locks the door before reaching for the phone.

"Defend this facility, men."

She doesn't avoid their fire. She doesn't duck. She strolls. She gloats. Rifle fire off her suit and her face and her fucking perfect teeth like so much popcorn thrown at the TV turning a football game. She snaps her fingers and jerks her head back and forth to a rhythm that he realizes is the soldier's pattern as they time their burst fire and then reload. She pats one trembling soldier on the head like she were a good puppy. She picks up a pen and throws it into his office's glass, shattering every pane in every frame into dust with some kind of chain reaction.

"Fuck you!" Sam snarls. 

He pulls his own sidearm and fires. This, she ducks. It traces her cape he got so close but her hair isn't even mussed. Three walls are missing and in the barracks, there are soldiers screaming and clutching their burned and melting skin.

"Argonian Strong Field inhibitor. Banned in all space-faring cultures. We done? Because I should go help the medics with your soldiers whose atoms you just slurried."

He fires again, catching her square in her smug face.

Rather than a charred skull, there's an irritating blonde puffing her hair out of her eyes.

"I didn't way it could _hurt_ me, I said it was a _banned weapon_. Props for the initiative."

* * *

Lena's green eyes drift to her lap.

"Trust is everything."

Kara leaps to her feet.

"Lena, take my hand, please."

"All right but..."

Kara grips Lena's hand.

"My name is Kara Danvers. In secret, my name is Kara Zor-El, and I am Supergirl. Welcome to my city."

They shake hands.

"Kara, I'm confused. I alrea-"

Lena's mind crashes and Kara can see it. See the little cursor blinking with the command prompt.

"I wanted to choose to share it with you, actively. Not just pass out and have you find out doing CPR. Choose to trust you with my sec-mmmmm!"

Lena is on top of Kara and her hands are hungry and there is _so much kissing_ and Lena is _pressing her thumb into Kara's mouth_ and of course she sucks it in with a little slurp sound that makes Lena's hips jump against hers and _how are they still wearing_ clothes and then long, nimble fingers which _have clearly done this before_ slide under Kara's belt, into her slacks and grab her panties and _pull_ until there's a tearing sound and Lena removes a stretched, damp mess and wads it in her pocket.

"Fuck," Kara gasps. Lena's forehead is pressed to hers and quick, hot, short breaths are shared in the air between them.

"That is the idea, yes."

"Take me, Lena. Make me _yours,_ " Kara demands.

* * *

"Hello?"

No one answers. Her cell phone is not charged, she doesn't have a landline and not a single thing looks out of place. They didn't hurt Smoky and if they were planning to do something to her, Clarissa reasons, they would have been by the front door, or the side door, not tucked away.

Stopping in the kitchen for a knife and the sharpening block, she approaches the bathroom. She toes it open so that she can see everything the door reveals as soon as it can see her.

Her bathtub is filled more than halfway and packed with all the ice from the fridge.

Sprawled in her bathtub is a woman who fires every queer cell in Clarissa's body. Her black hair, slightly curly and sweat matted and blood-streaked is short and close-cropped. Her arm has been peeled out of some kind of metal shirt -- armor, maybe -- and even half-unconscious, her triceps are as stiff and flexed as Clarissa's calves after cooling down from a set of lunges. Her nose is straight and substantial and her skin rides the edge between a tanned white girl and a stronger, truly ethnic shade like Latina or Middle Eastern. 

She ripped open all of the tampons, pads and gauze packages and there's a maxipad on her torso under the water and a torn in half tampon jammed into a divot in her forearm. She says something but for all Clarissa can tell, its flute music not speech.

Clarissa bangs the sharpening stone on the sink and the woman startles from her dazed state. Clarissa points the knife at her, points it away, and lowers her hand to the laundry basket. The woman nods, relaxing and it works. They're not going to kill each other and somehow, they've communicated this.

Not a murderer. Sexy. Strong. Semitic good looks. Basically, she has a wounded, female version of David after the battle sprawled in her tub and it's a bit much for a good Jewish girl going through a dry spell to deal with after a fucked up workday.

The iPad she spent entirely too much on is on the floor, cracked, with the web browser pulled up.

"Oh, come on!" Clarissa complains.

The woman makes some sort of hand gesture -- sign language? -- as if she's apologizing.

* * *

"Sis, you all right?" Alex calls.

Kara swallows. Hard. She knows this hum in her blood. The dizziness. It usually is accompanied by vomiting, screaming in pain and Lena shushing her, holding her close and apologizing. Apologizing like she's some monster, not the only person Kara can trust to experiment on how to deal with Kryptonite.

The rock in front of her is tiny, and scattered amongst others like bird's eggs. Blue. Pink. Red. Silver. Gold. Black. One pearly and shiny, like some deep ocean treasure. The pearly one calls particularly to her, so she secrets it into her suit, nestling it between her breasts and toggling the controls to tighten the fabric and keep it there. The shell is dry but the _feeling_ is of something heavy on her skin, like a cat's tongue or a soapy sponge or Lena's hand, warmed by hot water. Palm sliding over her breast as she shoves her into the tiles.

The green one is so small she can only feel it's bite when she touches her finger to it and even then it's tame. Like a misbehaving cat, not a chemical weapon.

"Kara!" Alex squawks. "Get away from there!"

Alex grabs her in and tight hug and walks sideways, taking Kara with her. She kicks the container's door closed and the other agent -- Jameson? -- latches it. Kara shakes the fogginess loose.

"Yeah. Sorry. Those are...weird?" Kara tells Alex, fumbling the word like it's not her own. "The green one hurt. The others, I don't think are there to hurt me. I could feel the effects and I got curious. How the fuck many types of Kryptonite are there, anyway? We're close to rainbow flag territory."

Alex chuckles.

"More than that, we think. You hurt? Did they do anything to you?"

* * *

The fact that her office smells like sex is actually a relief to Cat. The way Stacy and Harry had been splitting Siobahn like a wishbone, the absence of the musk, perfume and sweat would probably indicate a falling out at this point. Sure enough, the lanky Irishwoman is actually snoring into Stacy's lap, having pitched forward in mid-task when the vibe between her legs won out. A custom job by Kara, no doubt. It seems to have three robotic legs in a tripod-like arrangement and probably can follow the victim around like some kind of demonic crab.

The weed smell is not okay. Kara knows the rules: edibles and lubes only.

Then again it looks like _this_ Kara forgot rules exist because she has a nude, gyrating, beckoning Lioness on her desk with a blunt in her mouth and her M&M jar in one hand. Kara set the speakers to blast _Don't Give a Damn About My Reputation_ and if that's her reward for working late, Cat is right there with Joan Jett on this one. The lights were reprogrammed to a cold gleam and it seems and Kara's skin is silvery, like a full moon under the cold glare and Cat can even see crimson lines of capillaries tracing under her skin and like everything else, they glow in the dark.

"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

Designer clothes don't come off fast. It's a major flaw. By the time Cat has hobbled over to the desk while struggling with her left shoe, she feels like the best years of her life have long since passed her by.

She leans over Kara for a kiss. Dopey, high, silly, horny and finally _weaker_ than Cat. Her chance to steer.

When she reaches down to pinch the blunt, Kara surges into action and Cat doesn't register the motion and barely registers the sound of her clothes being shredded and the next thing her brain actually processes is the cool glass of her desk as she's mashed slowly down into it. Kara has her arms pinned and her long, powerful body curled against Cat. Smoke is puffed down around her head and there's no escape. 

"Legs apart. Hands on the edge of the desk. Now," Kara says, delivering a two-fingered swat to Cat's lower back.

"Carter missed his mom."

"Yes," Cat gulps. "I'm sorry."

Two swats, one on each side.

"That doesn't matter. _Someone_ has been a bad kitty and _someone_ made your lioness ditch a date with _her lioness_ to cover her ass..."

Kara digs her fingers -- hard -- into Cat's glutes and she hisses her approval even if she's going to be sitting on purple fingermarks tomorrow.

"Punishment, Cat. Punishment and a lesson. Dominance. That's what I offer. You?"

"Submission," Cat murmurs.

* * *

Cat groans. "We're not going to be able to take back what you said to Carter, are we?"

"Do you want me to, Cat? In all seriousness? Do you want me to tell Carter I didn't speak clearly? Because I will. Or if you want me to be part of his life from now on, I will do that. I want to do that. Split the week maybe, half there, half at my place. But you need to say it. You need to consent and I know it's a big ask, love."

"Yes, Kara. You can be his mom. Not that I should ever let you near him again."

"Please!" Kara whines. "I like my little lion cub. Wanna keep him."

"Fine. But only because you pouted."

* * *

The phone behind her rings, shaking Eliza's memories away like the last of her joint's haze.

She pads inside to answer it. The greyhound Kara insisted she adopt walks up beside her and Comet yawns wide, his narrow head seeming to split in half.

He nudges Eliza's hand with his nose.

"Hi, boy."

It's the landline which probably means a telemarketer. 

Comet grabs his favorite toy and tears into it. Good of him to keep her company.

"Doctor Eliza Danvers speaking."

"Hi, mom!"

Kara's voice, as always, makes her eyes open a bit further and her body feels a bit warmer.

"Hi, babygirl."

Kara sighs.

"I need to honor my third pledge to you, remember? The day we met?"

"A daughter never undermines her mother?"

Eliza rubs her temples.

"I don't remember the order for sure, sweetling."

 _"A daughter takes no lovers her mother does not know,"_ Kara replies in Kryptonian.

"I've met ... Stacy?"

"Yeah, and Harry. My life got more complicated since then. Not just the whole cape and skirt bit."

"You're still..."

_What, do I ask if she's still collecting sexual partners like some people collect rare coins? Has she switched to ditching them every two years like leased cars?_

"Yup, we're doing good. Stacy took over the deed so she can get her business insured. Fall is poor college student needs a laptop season and she gets good word of mouth."

"Who then?"

"I'm required to introduce them, not required to _not_ give you some suspense. We'll be at the exit in ten minutes."

Someone in the background says something to Kara, in Spanish and she replies and it collides with an answer to someone else in Vietnamese and then the unmistakable...

_'Are we there yet?'_

...adults never make that whine in quite that way.

"Kara?" Eliza whispers, sliding down on her now-weak legs.

"Yeah, mom. Want him to meet my favorite person. See you soon."

Eliza bawls into the receiver and Kara tells her she loves her in English, Hebrew, Ajaktanni and Kryptohavli before she hangs up.

Comet plops himself on Eliza's lap when she fully melts onto the floor.

"Good boy. Good dog."

She sets the phone down.

"Good girl. Good Kara."

* * *

Lois nods.

"Go apologize and come to some kind of an agreement with Short Stack."

Clark shuffles outside.

There's low, hushed whispering that gradually increases into a growl on Kara's part and finally a crack that rattles the windows.

"HOW DARE YOU!" she shrieks.

The front door bangs open. Kara shoves Clark inside.

"Lois, I'm sorry but as his chosen, you need to be here for this. Not sure how but you have the best husband and the _worst husband_ at the same fucking time."

"Kneel, Kal-El."

"No."

Kara's eyes flash.

"Kneel, or this gets worse."

"I won't fight you, Kara."

She rips her shirt open, then his, baring both their suits.

_"I, Kara Zor-El, eldest, female who comes out of Alura and out of mothers uncounted from Vyala naka Ina-Zenn and Eyara naka El do disavow, attaint, and disown you from the House of El for attempted treason against the house, the republic, and her people. Surrender your coat of arms and use them no more. Surrender your name and until you are instructed otherwise you are Kal Novoka. Kal of the Rankless."_

She gets his fingernails into the edges of his suit's coat of arms and fires her heat vision even as tears drop from her eyes and immediately boil. Little by little, she cuts the world-famous 'S' off and sets it aside. Clark doesn't try to stop her. He just sags.

Kara disappears upstairs, crying.

Lena Luthor wanders over with a click-click-click of thousand dollar heels.

_"My wife's heart is broken and you can count yourself lucky that I am the one Luthor alive who will go help her, rather than hurt you for it, Kal Novoka."_

As the last of the icy kryptohavli drips from her tongue, Lena turns on six-inch heels like only a force of nature or a vengeful goddess possibly could. 

* * *

The pickup's engine shuts off and Clark emerges.

Eliza slaps him, osteoporosis be damned. She shouldn't have but she really needed to.

"Five _fucking_ years, mister. Five years between when you left her here and when I finally got you on the phone with her. Excuse, excuse, excuse. Pretending I couldn't tell it was you speaking Russian. Every year, six days before the anniversary of you dropping her off, she crashed. Couldn't sleep no matter how much she cried. Alex had to do round-the-clock watch just in case."

He shakes his head.

"I should've accepted more of my responsibility. Tried to understand Kara's needs. I apologize."

"Apology _not_ accepted because my baby is hurting but personal growth _noted_ so make your hay-bailing ass useful and bring in the groceries. Lois?"

She salutes as crisply -- and disrespectfully -- as a military brat should.

"Ma'am?"

"Make sure he doesn't drop the eggs. And stay for dinner. That's an order."

"Aye-aye."

Eliza pushes up her sweater's sleeves and heads inside.

"Neither of you leave until I get an explanation."

* * *

"What happened?" Stacy asks.

"Punched Clark."

"Makes sense."

Eliza mulls on it. She can go to the hospital and get her hand fixed and get lectured on 'a woman her age' and bone density loss or she can stay here and hug her little girl better and if they have to fucking amputate...that's being a mom.

Harry comes into the room, wiping his forehead with a towel. All smiles.

"Hurt your hand?"

"Punched the Insensitive Man of Steel out there."

"Oof. I can relate, but still. Let me get Kara."

He hurries upstairs and Kara comes down, shattered-looking and but for the brunette on her arm, probably unable to manage the walk.

"Hi, mom. Harry said you needed help with your hand?"

Eliza blinks.

"What I should do is go punch Clark again but what I need to do is go to a clinic."

* * *

"Stay close, yeah?" Clarissa mutters. "Not a great neighborhood."

Lyta's head snaps up.

"Are you in danger, _zhutov?"_

"Probably not. But maybe. Let's just gas up and I'll use the restroom and we can go."

Even if she was not worried for her betrothed, Lyta would watch. A warlady who is even for a moment unaware of the terrain, creatures and weather in her surroundings is no longer fit for the term.

Clarissa staggers out of the back of the 'gas station' shivering and rubbing her arms. Lyta scarcely opens hers before she collides and closes in.

"For someone whose language doesn't have a word for it, you give really crazy good hugs," Clarissa teases.

_"Zhor mov tul rrip."_

"Heart, to you I clasp," Clarissa murmurs. "I like it. Don't really need a word for hug, I suppose."

Lyta lets her senses open, taking the full brunt of the madness around her into her brain.

"Get in the car, please, love."

She lifts the left lancer from its holder along with a bubble shield generator.

"Take these. Put that in your pocket."

"I don't know how to use a ray gun!" Clarissa hisses.

* * *

Looking over the town from above Lyta sees a young girl who is bruised and crying while holding a beast that looks like a black-furred warhound. For this, there will be no subtlety. Bypassing the old woman, she leaps through the bedroom window of the weeping girl, earning a snarl from the beast -- the animal is loyal, good -- and she shatters the door with an open-palmed strike.

"The fuck is your pro-oh god! Oh god, you're one of those aliens from Metropolis."

"Your daughter. She is injured and crying, male. I suspect that you are not comforting her because you are the _cause_ of her pain. Explain."

"She-sh-SHE NEEDS TO LEARN!"

"Girl," Lyta asks over her shoulder. "Would you and the animal be safer here, or with someone else?"

"S-s-someone else."

"Find a bag, pack it. I will inform someone who can find you both a better home."

The male, perhaps intoxicated, lunges towards her.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

She sidesteps his strike with her speed and lets it collide with the mirror.

"I am Lyta-Zod, warlady and Matriarch of Krypton. A strand of my hair is a million times stronger than your _spine,_ male. So perhaps you should be silent."

"Scary metal lady?" the girl asks.

How she wishes the grim situation allowed her to laugh.

"Yes, little one?"

"M'ready. Don't have a leash, though."

Lyta pulls a lamp from the floor, traces the cord at both ends with her heat vision to sever it and hands it to the girl.

* * *

The vandal is busy spray painting another house. She slips away from the girl and dashes into his field of vision. Hopefully the blueshift around her from exiting lightspeed will make him take her seriously.

"Cease!" Lyta commands.

"Got a right to free spe-FUCK!" he shouts.

"What...you...you were all the way over there!" he complains.

She presses her thumb into his palm and watches his bones carefully so that she doesn't render them into powder.

"And now I am here. So you should focus on the present. Your hand is not damaged. Yet. This is discomfort, not pain. Pain, you will recognize when I cause it. Do you know that symbol? How much it can hurt people?"

He nods.

"Then why do you paint it?"

"It's not like I believe it. Jack thought it would be funny to...to...well, to get a rise out of people."

"Provoke them, you mean?"

"Yes."

_Idiot, but teachable._

She takes the can and crushes it until it is no more than a tiny sphere.

"Now that you have provoked a reaction, do you think it was worthwhile? Was the amusement sufficient for the consequences?"

* * *

Clarissa raises an eyebrow when she sees them. The lancer is in her lap but she's alert and wary. Halfway will have to do.

"Hello, Lyta. Do I want to know what happened? Or should I guess? You...hmm. Rescued an abused little girl and I'm thinking the red paint on your glove means you caught the swastika graffiti guy."

Lyta leans down towards the girl.

"I love her because she's smart," she whispers.

Clarissa laughs, quick and rudely. Like a snort.

"Back at you, babe. Well, kid, get in the back before the sun goes down. I am _done_ with the weirdness in Clemson Creek, New Jersey."

* * *

Lillian cracks the door and the dog is gone, seemingly falling down the last few steps in his excitement.

Then there's barking. That will not do. She will not have backsliding on the barking.

"Xerxes! Hey boy!" a female voice calls out. "I haven't seen you in ages, huh? Junior year, that's right! Yeah. Good boy!"

_Lena. Lena is in my house._

Outside the window a series of white flashes pierce the purpling predawn sky.

"Oh, fuck."

Lex left weapons at each of the family properties, for human and alien intruders both. If she has to put her perverted, too-trusting race traitor of a daughter down herself, she will. She has a kryptonite pistol and an antiproton projector. Have to do. 

"It seems young Miss Luthor has bought this property. All properties except the Metropolis estate, the Smallville estate and your mother's manor in Westchester."

When she gets to the bottom of the stairs, one of her lawyers is waiting. She holds out a document for her.

Lena lazily turns her head to that blonde vermin beside her.

"Skinny or regular dipping?" she purrs.

"Hmm," the alien muses. "Depends if you do the dishes."

"HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU IN MY HOUSE!" Lillian bellows.

Xerxes startles and then settles back in. Traitorous cur.

Lillian raises the weapon. Her daughter should die first. It buzzes. 

She looks down.

_Biometrics changed? How in the fuck did she do that?_

"Pays to have a Coluan friend," Lena jokes. "...and a brother who is not nearly so clever with his nostalgic ciphers as he thinks. So, all of Lex's central codes are mine now. I initiated the self-destruct sequences at all his bunkers over breakfast. Tea?"

She gestures to the pot on the coffee table.

"Why are you vermin all here?"

Lena rubs Xerxes' ears. Beast always liked her too much.

"It would seem that in my house I could host a backyard wedding. Friends and family. So much less light pollution here than National City or Metropolis, mother."

* * *

Eliza offers one of the craft beers.

"S'not poisoned," she chuckles when Lilian just glares.

"Do have one question. Mom to mom?"

"What's that?"

"Why'd you treat Lena so terribly? When you could have loved her? Were you abused as a child?"

Lillian shakes her head.

"I was raised comfortably but also properly. Taught that the world isn't easy. Lena wasn't ready. Coddled by that slut who fucked my husband. I was trying to make her ready. Not ready enough, apparently."

"So you thought abusing her was going to _help_ her?"

Something fast and green and _hard_ makes it all go away.

Lillian manages to blink enough to get her vision back but her hearing is hit and miss The woman from before, Lena, and the two Danvers sisters are arguing at the other end of the porch. Eliza is swigging her lemonade.

"-as pretty badass, mom. Wait... OH MY GOD! Is that the same bottle? Gross. Jameson, grab my mother a less...vampirey bottle, please."

"-ot honorable under Raoism to beat up the hosts!"

"-echnically, _gra mo chroi,_ it's my house so I'm the host. I believe we can forgive Eliza."

"-aybe I just don't want my mom in jail for killing some antisemitic, homophobic, racist fossilized hag with a _hard lemonade_!"

The younger soldier from yesterday offers her hand. The one from Zod.

"What have we learned, Lillian?"


	2. Give No Quarter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Lillian Luthor gets a tiny fraction of what she deserved.

**Lillian Luthor | Jackson Hole, Wyoming**

Luthors do not curl up in a ball on the floor. This is an exercise in resilience, is what's happening. It would be an _easier_ exercise if that Kryptonian slut hadn't systematically suicide-proofed the entire fucking house. She even seemed halfway genuine that she didn't want anything to happen and _a lot of people have difficult in-laws,_ she said with a chuckle.

Lena was clearly a bad investment in food and shelter and education and should have been drowned like a deformed mongrel pup. She has no such compunctions.

There's a thump up against her bedroom door.

"Kara!" Lena laughs. "What has gotten into you?"

"Bed far," the beast grunts. "Too far."

"This is my mother's bedroom door, Kara."

"Maybe the hinge needs lubrication, _zhutov vaena_. I can be very handy."

"Just get down there," Lena snarls.

Lillian continues her resistance exercises, pulling in a bit tighter.

\-----

As it happens, that was the _easy_ part of the morning.

Lillian waits until the scratching of fingernails on oak ceases and the panting and grunting fades down the hall, then sneaks out for breakfast.

The kitchen island is slate. Rather, it _was_ slate and now it's rendered halfway to dust.

The soldier from Zod is leaning against it, head back, eyes screwed shut. White-knuckled fingers digging into solid rock on one hand and the other out of sight, though its task is not hard to guess.

"Clar," the soldier gasps. "There. Just...there...keep going."

The woman who can't be seen -- clearly, she's on her knees between that monster's legs -- hums and chuckles.

The soldiers breath becomes nothing more than a series of gasps and she claps her hand over her eyes, catching a long flare of her heat vision. When she uncovers her face, panting, the Jewess between her legs hops up, breasts bared shamelessly, curly hair a rat's nest of sweaty brown and goes to kiss her. She winds her fingers in one hand an reaches for the other.

"Clar, darling, no. That hand's...hot."

"Pan isn't kosher," she jokes.

The soldier glances over to Lillian's _meticulously_ arranged cookware and rests her hand on a copper wok. The superheated flesh passes through the metal and into the shale, leaving rock fused with slag when it finally cools.

"I GIVE UP!" Lillian shrieks.

\-----

The other monster, the one with the house symbol, has left and taken her blue whore with her. 

Small blessings.

Lillian staggers out the front door to find a neatly packed and stacked set of luggage under a tarp.

Heavily armed soldiers -- including the redhead from last night -- are standing at the front gate, weapons raised. Weapons with human-style grips, controls and scopes but attached to what look like alien energy weapons. Their body armor is hard plates and the plates are crisscrossed with what looks like bioelectric muscle fiber wrapped in metal tubing.

A man in an off the rack suit -- FBI, no question -- is with them. He offers her a document. Presidential Seal, warrant signed by the secret court that handles Guantanamo Bay and approves killings in drone strikes. The works. Even if they let her get to her lawyers, the lawyers would be liable for abetting a terrorist and she doesn't pay them _that much_ nor could she with LuthorCorp stripped, gutted, renamed and in the control of her slut of a daughter.

This is what might have happened to Bin Laden had he been captured.

"Lillian Luthor, Special Agent Reynolds, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pursuant to National Security Order 122178 you are hereby remanded to the custody of Group 18. You will receive standard protections of an enemy combatant in a time of war. If you wish to record a message for the American government to review..."

He nods at a hulking digital camera laid on a table beside the fence.

"You may do so."

She shakes her head.

The redhead jerks her thumb toward Lillian.

"Bag and bin, gentlemen. Bag and bin."

As the black bag goes down over her head, Lillian asks the only question she can think of.

"Who's Group 18?"

"No idea," the redhead purrs in her ear. "Because we don't exist. Tomorrow, no one at the FBI will have a single drop of ink on Group 18. I don't exist and _you sure as hell don't fucking exist,_ prisoner number 1318. We have an understanding?"

"Very much so."

\-----

Lillian's cell isn't opulent and reminders she is a prisoner are legion but it's also not exactly a _cell_. A bed, a toilet and a shower with a _mostly opaque_ curtain, soap and shampoo. There's a rubberized e-reader with the WiFi card physically removed from the slot. Chess board. Her record collection in a plexiglass case and an MP3 player on top of the case, probably with the vinyl converted.

Her reading glasses.

The redhead stands at the door one hand on her clearly alien-inspired sidearm, one hand poised over some kind of touchscreen.

"If we need you, this will chime four times. Calendar reminders will be announced verbally. I'm setting the day-night cycle to Jackson Hole and..."

She laughs and sweet mercy of God, Lillian's gut twists when she does.

"...I'll see you for your yearly physical if nothing else."

She taps a code into the panel -- covering her hand, smart girl -- and the plexiglass octagon she's inside flickers, simulating the inside of a rustic cabin.

It's done. Lillian has been stored and if someone ever interrupts her existence, it's likely to be Lena for a game of chess.

Some sort of automated chute brings a meal on a tray. Pancakes and some sort of peanut-based protein bars.

On top is a note. Lena's handwriting.

> _**There were other options, mother. We know that you still know things and I know people who could get them out of you without so much as** **bruise. So** **be** **grateful I'm a kinder person than you. Lena Kieran Luthor-El** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want my STARWIND to be better than the DEO on the show so they don't interrogate people like Lillian, just confine them. I thought about prison but Lillian is the exact sort of person who could hire the exact sort of lawyers to get out or just buy out some senators or judges.
> 
> The extraordinary rendition was a must and she did give a man the tools to launch nukes at a small town in the continental United States.
> 
> The mimicry of her surroundings in the smart glass was originally invented to stabilize mentally ill aliens.


End file.
